Telling the Truth

Guest (Female): Today on Telling the Truth, Stuart Briscoe begins a message called Trials and Temptations, where he shares why God allows temptations in your life. But before we hear from Stuart, we want to help you grow strong in your faith as you conquer temptation by sending you Triumph Over Temptation, a powerful four-message series by Stuart and Jill Briscoe.

We'll send you a copy of Triumph Over Temptation as thanks for your gift today to help continue Stuart and Jill's legacy of helping others experience life in Christ. So call today to request your copy of Triumph Over Temptation: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's Stuart Briscoe and the message Trials and Temptations.

Stuart Briscoe: My dad used to say, isn't it a mystery that the same sun that melts wax hardens clay? I remember as a kid thinking, yeah, that's a mystery. Why would the same sun melt wax and harden clay? When I thought about it a little bit longer, I thought it's not really much of a mystery at all. In actual fact, the constituency of wax is so designed that when it is exposed to heat, it melts. And of course, as far as clay is concerned, the constituency of clay is such that when it is exposed to heat, it hardens. So it sort of spoiled a bit of the mystery for me, but it made sense.

Then I thought, isn't it amazing? You can get two people exposed to the same sets of circumstances, and some go one way and some go the other. Then I thought it isn't really strange because in actual fact, when they're exposed to these circumstances, all that happens is you find out what they're made of. You find out what's going on inside.

The Bible talks a lot about temptation. It also talks about testing. The interesting thing about it, of course, is that in the language of the New Testament, Greek, they only have the same word, one word, *peirasmos*, for testing and temptation. I suppose when you're exposed to a situation, what determines whether it is a temptation or a testing is your response to it.

You see, every time a situation comes your way, it gives you the opportunity to do right or the chance to go wrong. And the doing right or the going wrong tells you something about yourself. So you could get two people, identical situations, one will go right and the other will go wrong. That's probably why God allows temptation to continue in our lives.

The Apostle Paul was very much concerned as far as the Corinthians were concerned, that they were being tempted to be drawn back into the pagan feasts. All kinds of garbage going on there. He says they don't belong there. He decides that he will try to address this particular issue with them by showing them that their forefathers, the children of Israel, when they were delivered from Egypt, went through rather similar circumstances and that they did not do well.

And so he goes to some considerable length describing the historical details of what happened with the ancient children of Israel, and then he applies it to the Corinthians and he says, "These things are written for our example." A modern translation of that is, "These things are written to screw it into our senses," to really get the message through. Because you see, what happened to the children of Israel was not only relevant to the Corinthian church, it is relevant today.

They were exposed to situations that gave them the chance to do right or to go wrong. That's exactly the situation in which we find ourselves all the time. We call it temptation or we call it testing. Some people of course are not very interested in history. Henry Ford said, "History is bunk." So much for his opinion of history. I wonder what he would think about the historical view of him now, whether he would regard that as bunk.

Hegel, of course, he had a rather skeptical view of history. He said if history teaches us anything, it simply teaches us that it doesn't teach us anything. Probably a commentary on the fact that we're not very good at learning. And somebody else has pointed out that if we do not learn from history, we're damned to repeat it. What was happening with the Corinthians was that they were very well aware of the history of their forefathers, but they refused to learn from it and accordingly were in deep danger of being damned to repeat it. The same, of course, is true for people today.

So let's spend a little time looking into 1 Corinthians 10 to find out what we can about the children of Israel. The children of Israel were people who were greatly blessed, they were greatly privileged. God had told them quite categorically out of all the nations, he had chosen them to be his precious possession. He had said that they were to be to him a kingdom of priests. They were his holy nation. He had set his specific love and attention upon them in order that they might become the means of blessing to all the nations of the world. There had never been a privileged people like the people of Israel. Unfortunately, they abused their privilege.

How did they do that? First of all, through lack of appreciation of the blessings that had been heaped upon them. You'll notice that Paul reminds them that when they were delivered from slavery in Egypt, every one of them followed the cloud. What he means by that is that God showed the way for the children of Israel in the form of a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day. They had quite specific guidance from the Lord.

Not only that, he says that all of them passed through the sea. You'll remember that after the children of Israel were delivered from the Egyptians, the Egyptians finally caught on and chased after them. They caught up with the Israelites just as they'd come to the banks of the Red Sea, and so they had the sea in front of them and they had the army behind them. A classic case of being stuck between the devil and the deep Red Sea. Little touch of humor there, which I enjoyed immensely.

Now, God opened a way through the sea for them. You remember Charlton Heston did that wonderfully for us. And we got the picture of the sea piling up and them going through, and the Egyptians, when they tried to do it, being destroyed. They were, according to Paul, all baptized unto Moses at that time in the sea and in the cloud. What that means is that they went through an experience where they clearly identified with Moses, the man of God. They were experiencing divine guidance, they were experiencing divine deliverance, they were identifying with the one who had delivered them and who was providing for them.

Not only that, when they got into the wilderness, they did have a tendency to grumble. They grumbled that the food wasn't good enough. They grumbled that they didn't have enough refreshment. And so God provided abundantly for them in both regards. He told Moses to strike the rock, and the rock flowed with water. They had a legend in Israel that the rock actually followed them. Paul spiritualizes this, and what he tells them is in actual fact it was God in Christ who was following them, providing for them all that they needed in the wilderness journeys.

They wanted more food, and so he sent them angel bread. That's another name for manna. Manna doesn't say much because it's simply a Hebrew word which means, "What is it?" So when they got up in the morning and the manna was there, the kid said, "What is it?" and the mother said, "It's what is it." And so they said, "What's for breakfast?" and she said, "What is it?" and they said, "Well, what is it?" she said, "What is it." It's a wonderful illustration if you don't have much material and you've a lot of time left for the sermon. Then they had lunch—no, I won't do that to you.

Angel bread. Miraculously fed, but they got fed up with that, so God sent the quail. He sent them all the meat that they could take. He provided for them abundantly. He led them meticulously. He delivered them wonderfully. And all he asked them to do was to trust him and live in obedience to him. They wouldn't. Time after time they tried his patience.

Guest (Female): Why does God allow temptations in your life? That's what Stuart Briscoe is talking about on today's Telling the Truth, and he's coming right back with more. Temptation is nothing new. It's been around since the dawn of mankind, and it's not going anywhere as long as we're on this earth. You'll face temptation every day, but sometimes moment by moment.

So we want to send you a special resource to help you stand strong in God's word when temptation does come along. It's a four-message series from Stuart and Jill Briscoe called Triumph Over Temptation, and they created it to help you not only conquer temptation but to grow stronger in your faith as you do. This series will give you powerful biblical tools to defeat sinful desires and encourage you with the truth that every temptation to do wrong is also an opportunity to do right.

We'll send you Triumph Over Temptation as our thanks for your gift today to keep sharing the life-changing truth of God's word with people across the globe through the resources and teaching of Telling the Truth. So call today to request your copy of this resource: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now we head back to Stuart Briscoe.

Stuart Briscoe: Time after time they tried his patience. Time after time the Lord allowed testing times to come. But remember that in Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 2, he tells us exactly why he allowed these testing times to come. He said, "I did it in order that I might know what was in your heart." Which, of course, is exactly what happens when testing times come.

It's like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. When you squeeze it hard, it squirts out. When the testing times come, they squeeze our lives and what's inside squirts out. And it was very obvious what was in the hearts of these Israelites. It was not gratitude, it was not love for the Lord their God, it was not covenant keeping, it was not obedience. It was grumbling, it was an attitude that was all wrong. Their hearts were lusting after evil things, Paul tells us. And that was the essence of their failure. They failed to appreciate blessings.

The second thing, of course, was that there was a marked lack of obedience as far as they were concerned. Paul points out to us that when the children of Israel were traveling in the wilderness, they were prepared to engage in idolatrous activities. Now, when God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses in the wilderness, right at the very beginning, he pointed out that he was the Lord and that they were not to engage in any idolatrous activity whatsoever. Sounds very strange and utterly irrelevant to us today.

But just a moment, what is idolatry? Idolatry is the substitution of God by man for something that man prefers over God. It is a decision on the part of man not to worship, not to honor, not to glorify the one true God, but to honor and glorify that which is a substitute for the one true God. And remember that the substitute is of human creation and therefore is of human control. So human beings now worship that which they create, that which they prefer, that which they substitute, and that which they control.

That is the essence of idolatry. And when you think about it for a moment, it obviously is one of the most heinous of sins. You say, well, we don't need to worry about that in our culture today, do we? Well, think about it for a minute. Are there any substitutes for God in our culture? Are they of human ingenuity? Are they of human manufacture? Are they of human control? Are they the things that people worship and are they the things that people trust? And the answer is yes. Our culture is full of idols and there is much idolatry in the hearts of men and women.

Some people have implicit trust in money. They are pretty well convinced that if you've got enough money, which they never define, but if they've got enough money, you can pretty well do what you like. You can go where you want, you can have what you want, you can get to know who you want, you can avoid what you want, and you can get the best of everything. Money talks, money buys, money is God. You know that's true.

There's some people have decided that the answer to all their illness is medicine. They expect everything to be fixed, everything to be cured. They get very, very upset if the doctors don't come through. They grumble if the doctors sometimes give the impression of behaving like God, but they expect medicine to be their God. They are very, very upset, they feel cheated if for some reason modern medicine doesn't fix it. Why? Because they trust it, they believe in it, they have great confidence in it. They think that they have control over it, and it becomes a substitute for God and his eternal purposes in people's lives.

Sometimes it's money and sometimes it's medicine, and sometimes when we get into international conflict, it's the military. It's the military that's going to fix it, just so long as we have a strong military we can deal with all our enemies and we will be secure. And if it isn't the military and it isn't money and it isn't medicine, then the market will fix it. Modern idols. The substitutes for God of human ingenuity and human control. That which we honor, that which we trust, that which we obey, that to which we bow down.

The problem with the children of Israel was that they were prepared to engage in idolatry at the very time that God was outlining his laws to them. For whilst Moses was on the mountain literally receiving the Ten Commandments, the children of Israel were down in the valley dancing and cavorting and fornicating and worshipping around a golden calf. When Moses saw it, he dropped the Ten Commandments, they shattered in small pieces. He talked to Aaron and he said, "What is this what I see?" and Aaron gives the classic explanation of what happened. He said, "They gave me their gold rings, I threw them in the fire, and out came this calf." It just came out.

A kind of naive explanation that men and women give God today when he asks them about their behavior. They engaged in idolatry. So they failed to appreciate blessings and they failed to acknowledge God in obedience. The second thing that we notice, of course, is clearly allied to this. Paul points out that the children of Israel in the wilderness gave way to sexual immorality.

Now it seems in the epistle to the Corinthians, you keep coming up with this business of sexual immorality. Almost sounds as if we preachers have got a thing about it. We don't, it is simply that in the days of the children of Israel and the days of the Corinthian church, there was a major problem as far as sexual behavior was concerned, and sisters and brothers, there still is. There is still a problem here.

God has said unequivocally, unambiguously, that a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they two will become one flesh, and sex outside of those parameters is sexual immorality. I'm tired of saying it, it is necessary. The Bible keeps on repeating it, we have heavy ears in this area. And when we begin to think in terms of living rightly or going wrong, the simple fact of the matter is this, in our culture today it is regarded as perfectly normative to go wrong. Right has become wrong, wrong has become right.

Now the tragedy, of course, is when this attitude begins to insinuate itself into the fellowship of believers, into the Church of Christ. It's as old as the children of Israel getting into sexual immorality. The Lord continues to work with these people. He continues to deal with them and to ask them to respond to him in loving obedience and faithfulness, and they're not prepared to do it.

The result of all this is that not only do they fail to appreciate blessings and fail to obey commands, but they also fail to exercise faith in the living God. They begin to say, "Can God provide a table in the wilderness?" They begin to turn on Moses. They begin to say, "Let's get rid of Moses and his cohorts, let's stone them, let's turn against God, let's go back to Egypt."

When they arrive at the border of the Promised Land, they send the spies in. Two of them, Caleb and Joshua, come back with a great report, "Let's go get it, men!" and the other people say, "No way! The opposition is too great, the problems are too immense, our God is not big enough, let's go back to Egypt." Lack of faith, lack of obedience, lack of appreciation. This is the essence of their abuse of privilege. And God all the time has given them the opportunity to obey and has given them the opportunity to trust and has given the opportunity of gratitude, and every single time they blow it and they fail to be what he's called them to be. And these things are written for the example of the Corinthians and they're preserved in Scripture for the example of the church today.

Guest (Female): This is Telling the Truth, and you've just heard Stuart Briscoe with his message Trials and Temptations. Stuart will be right back in a moment with a final thought for the day. We all struggle at times with sinful desires and selfish motives. And when you do, you must remember that every temptation to do wrong is also an opportunity to do right.

That's the empowering truth Stuart and Jill Briscoe wanted to help you grasp when they created their four-message series Triumph Over Temptation. This series will equip you with powerful biblical truth to help you triumph over temptation and grow your faith in the process. Triumph Over Temptation is our thanks for your gift to keep sharing the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth with so many people around the world.

Generous friends like you keep broadcasts like this one going, reaching others with God's healing love so they can experience life in Christ and find strength to carry on with courage. So if you haven't given before, consider a gift today to help keep God's word going out around the world to you and many others. And remember to request your copy of Triumph Over Temptation when you call and give. Just call 1-800-889-5388, 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's Stuart with one last thought about why God allows you to face temptation.

Stuart Briscoe: Is it possible that we are failing as God allows us to be tested in the areas of gratitude, in the areas of obedience, and in the areas of faith? What happened as far as these people were concerned? It's very important that we notice that the Scriptures tell us with many of these people, God was not well pleased.

He had brought them in large numbers out of Egypt with every intention of taking them into the Promised Land. They had 11 days' journey through the wilderness. It took them 40 years to cover an 11-day journey. That was because they failed the test. God was not pleased with them and he said that nobody over the age of 20, with the exception of two men, Caleb and Joshua, would go into the Promised Land.

The tragedy was this: he was not pleased with them. The tragedy was this: they did not enter into the blessings that were available to them. The tragedy was this: that instead of discovering all that God had for them, because they failed the test, they never came through. These things are written as a warning for us.

What can the possible application of this be as far as we're concerned? We don't need to look very hard because the Scripture is explicit as far as the application is concerned. Application number one: we should be aware of spiritual complacence. The warning that comes through is this, "Therefore let him that thinks he stands take heed lest he fall."

I have no doubt that these people of Israel, when they were delivered from Egypt, when they followed the cloud, when they came through the sea, when they heard the Ten Commandments, I have no doubt that these people said, "We belong to the people of God, we've identified with Moses, we've gone through the baptism in the Red Sea, we have eaten the special food in the wilderness, we have experienced the religious rites, we have observed the religious spectaculars, we have made the religious connotations, we are the people," and God said, "Oh no, you are not."

Guest (Female): That's Stuart Briscoe on today's Telling the Truth. Before we go, we want to remind you, when you give to continue Stuart and Jill's legacy of sharing God's word through Telling the Truth broadcasts like this one, we'll say thanks with the Briscoes' four-message series Triumph Over Temptation. These encouraging messages will help you defeat temptation and grow in your faith as you do. So please, request your copy when you call 1-800-889-5388, 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online when you visit tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for being here with us today on Telling the Truth. Come back next time for more biblical truth to help you experience life in Christ.